Tomorrow’s agenda for BloggerCon calls for a discussion of blog and journalism. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been reading what other people had to say, synthesizing it in my own head and trying to figure out what it all meant. From there, I came to a couple of conclusions: Blogs are not journalism Journalism happens on blogs Blogs are the single biggest threat to the online publishing industry and the print publishing industry. Blogs are the single largest opportunity to the online publishing industry and could represent a big opportunity for the print industry. I know it sounds like 2 sets of contradictory statements but I’m really not hedging my bets here. What is happening is that blogs are representing such a radical shift in online publishing that what the response is from journalists and other content publishers will either increase or decrease the impact of the blogging phenomenon. What is happening is not so much a revolution as a continuing evolution of the trends started with the rise of the commercial Internet. Looking back, looking forward Let’s first take a step back in order to better understand the blogging phenomenon. They year is 1994. At that point, the…

So it looks like my thoughts (see below) made it on Metafilter and are starting to make their way on other blogs with interesting comments coming up in each cases. While I appreciate the accolades, what I find most interesting is that people are divided over whether blogging is journalism. It’s an interesting question and one for which I have my own personal answer: right now, for the most parts, it isn’t. But is there a kernel of truth to the possibility that it is? Some say it will never be. If that’s truly the case, why is it that the media is painting it as such? Is it because they do NOT understand the weblog phenomenon? Is it because they have been misinformed by people in the blogging community who believe that it is? And if it’s not, what is it? Has the “professional press” been swindled into buying a non-story? Something tells me that this is not quite the case. I do believe that somewhere, between where blogs are right now and where they could go, lies a grain of truth to the blog’s potential for being a new journalistic form. Let’s dissect the job of a journalist….